SHAFAQNA

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –Israeli artillery fired on Friday night several shells towards Palestinian citizens' lands in the north of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip.

PIC's correspondent reported that a number of Israeli military vehicles raided the liberated area of Dugit and fired several shells at the free zone in the area of Atatra, in the northern Gaza Strip. No injuries were reported.

The occupation has escalated its violations of the Egyptian-brokered truce it signed with the Palestinian factions under Arab and international auspices last November. -www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:PIC

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –Israeli security forces overnight Thursday demolished two structures that Jewish settlers had erected to create a "wildcat" outpost in the occupied West Bank, a police spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse about 500 Palestinian villagers marching toward another Jewish settlement outpost in the West Bank on Friday.

Soldiers and border policemen razed the makeshift structures of the Oz Zion outpost near the central city of Ramallah without incident, Luba Samri told AFP.

The security forces have dismantled structures erected at Oz Zion on several occasions in the past – most recently in March – but settlers have persisted in putting up new ones.

In a violent confrontation in December, more than 200 stone-throwing settlers drove off an attempt by security forces to dismantle structures put up at Oz Zion, wounding five border policemen. They were demolished the following day.

Israel cites Biblical and historical claims to the land, but the United Nations considers the settlements illegal and most world powers say they are an obstacle to peace.

Israel has sanctioned the building of 120 settlements, but around 100 outposts built without the approval of the Israeli government dot the West Bank. Israel deems these settlement outposts to be illegal and often sends security personnel to demolish them.

The outposts usually consist of little more than a few trailers, but some have been granted retrospective approval by the government, which is why settler activists keep putting them up.

On Friday, the Israeli army attacked a Palestinians demonstration in the West Bank with tear gas and rubber bullets. The procession, the largest of its kind for years, followed charges by Palestinians that the Israeli settlers, whose caravans abut village land, had attacked them twice this week.

Men from Deir Jarir, including Christian and Muslim clerics, gathered for Friday prayers on a craggy outcrop between their village and a cluster of half a dozen makeshift settler homes surrounded by Israeli army jeeps and soldiers.

Their march, preceded by a group of stone-throwing youths, was repeatedly pushed back by salvos of Israeli tear gas. Young boys howled from the effects of the tear gas and old men hitched up their robes to flee, holding onion slices to their noses.

Medics treated several men for gas inhalation and rubber bullet wounds.

A few Palestinian villages hold weekly protests against the Israeli army and settlements, usually involving a score of rock-throwing youngsters, and unrest has mounted this year.

But political gatherings are rare around Deir Jarir, and was sparked after villagers say settlers torched around ten of their cars on Monday night, after planting an Israeli flag on a derelict church on Friday and pelting village youth with stones.

"This was a peaceful area. We're gathered today to say we refuse to be attacked and driven off our own land," said Sami Issa, a resident. "We want their army to pull the settlers out."

The Israeli military has said it is investigating the events leading up to the march. Asked about Friday's incidents, an army spokesman said: "Soldiers responded to a group of some 250 stone-throwing youths with riot dispersal means near Ofra."

On Tuesday, settlers vacated several shops they had occupied as homes in the southern West Bank city of Hebron for 12 years, ahead of a Supreme Court deadline for them to leave.

The Israeli army had evicted Palestinian shopkeepers merchants from their premises in Hebron's central market area during a military operation in 2001, after which the settlers moved in.

Following a legal battle between the settlers and Israeli campaign group Peace Now, the Supreme Court ruled the shops – dubbed Beit Ezra by their Jewish occupants – should be vacated by Wednesday.

Around half a million settlers have moved to the West Bank and East Jerusalem since Israel captured the area, along with the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Middle East War. -www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:al-akhbar

SHAFAQNA-- The Israeli military says it has shot down an unmanned aircraft several kilometres off the coast of the northern port city of Haifa after it entered Israeli airspace from Lebanon.

"An unmanned aircraft [UAV] was identified approaching the coast of Israel and was successfully intercepted by IAF aircraft five nautical miles off the coast of Haifa at approximately 14:00 [1100 GMT] today," the military said.

Israel's deputy defence minister blamed the drone Lebanese group Hezbollah, which sent a similar drone into Israel last October.

The incident took place as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu was flying to attend a ceremony in the Druze village of Julis, some 32 kilometres northeast of Haifa, with the helicopter briefly landing after he received the news.

"I see this attempt to breach our borders as extremely grave," Netanyahu said.

"We will continue to do whatever we must to protect the security of Israel's citizens."

Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner told reporters the drone had been identified moving down the Lebanese coast before reaching Israeli airspace.

"A little after 1:00 pm, our aerial defence system identified (a drone) moving from north to south along the coast of Lebanon," he said.

"Aircraft, helicopters and combat airplanes were alerted to the area and after confirmation that it was an unfriendly aircraft, they were approved to shoot it down."

Lerner didn’t say who Israel suspected to be behind the drone, only that the incident was still being investigated.

"We don't know where the aircraft was coming from and where it was actually going," he said, adding that the navy was "searching for the remains of the UAV" as part of the probe.

Tensions with Hezbollah

But Deputy Defence Minister Danny Danon said it was clear that Lebanese group Hezbollah was behind the attack.

"We're talking about another attempt by Hezbollah to send an unmanned drone into Israeli territory," he told Israel's army radio, describing it as "another attempt to destabilise the Middle East."

However, the Lebanese group denied the drone was theirs, saying in a statement on Thursday: "Hezbollah denies that it has sent any surveillance plane towards the occupied Palestinian land."

On October 7, Israeli warplanes shot down an unarmed drone over Israel's southern Negev desert after it entered the country's airspace from the Mediterranean Sea, with Netanyahu blaming Hezbollah.

Several days later, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah confirmed his group had sent an Iranian-built drone into Israeli airspace and claimed it had overflown sensitive sites in Israel.

He said the drone was "Iranian-built and assembled in Lebanon."

Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin in Beirut said that “the threat of war between Israel and Hezbollah is always there.”

“For many Lebanese it’s even an imminent war, they think that somehow, sooner or later, there will be a war because Israel will try to undermine these capabilities by Hezbollah,” Amin said.

Israel waged a month-long war on Lebanon in 2006 after a Hezbollah cross-border raid. Since that incident, Israeli aircraft has regularly performed overflights into Lebanese territory.

www.en.shafaqna.com

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –Syria says anti-Damascus Western powers and their regional allies are seeking to replace the Arab-Israeli conflict with an Islamic-Islamic one in an attempt to cover up Israel’s occupation of other territories.

During a speech at the UN Security Council, Syrian Ambassador to the UN Bashar al-Ja’afari said the Israeli regime has been occupying lands in Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, while no internal effort has been made to end the occupation, Syria’s official news agency SANA reported on Thursday.

“The overwhelming enthusiasm of some to adopt resolutions under the Chapter VII disappears when it comes to Israel,” Ja’afari stated.

Western powers and their regional allies including Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are partners in supporting anti-Syria militant groups, including al-Qaeda-linked terrorists, to destabilize Syria and overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian envoy further highlighted the Tel Aviv regime’s illegal settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, saying that the international community has failed to give a firm response to the Israeli occupation.

The Tel Aviv regime introduced nuclear weapons to the Middle East, while sanctions are imposed on other countries which possess peaceful nuclear energy programs under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and in cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Syrian ambassador said.

Ja’afari also censured the nearly 45-year-old occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights by the Israeli regime, saying that Tel Aviv offers logistic aid to the armed terrorist groups in the occupied Syrian land.

The Israeli regime seized the Syrian territory on the strategically important Golan Heights in the 1967 war. Tel Aviv annexed the territory on December 14, 1981 — a move which was never recognized by the international community and was a violation of international law.

Israel is also massively expanding the construction of its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

-www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:Islamic invitation turkey

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –Yadlin added, in a statement at the conference of the Institute for National Security Studies (INNS) in Tel Aviv, that he did not rule out a confrontation between Israel and Syria. However, he warned of the Syrian Army’s power, indicating that “we are not talking about a war with Hezbollah or Hamas Movement, but about a tough war, because a war with the Syrian Army means that Scud missiles, and maybe more advanced missiles, would hit Tel Aviv.”

Channel 2 further quoted Yadlin as saying that “who is not aware that the fall of Assad is a positive development for Israel, would be incapable of reading the situation correctly.”
Moreover, he considered that “President Assad is a negative element in the Missile East, and Israel’s benefit requires weakening and withdrawing him, because this would break the Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah axis.”
“This would weaken Hezbollah, then Iran, which will not have any strength in the region, and all this would benefit Israel,” he added. -www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:Islam times

SHAFAQNA-- Israel's internal security agency has been authorised to demand "suspicious" foreign travellers open their personal email accounts for inspection on entry to the country.

Shin Bet officials have been given approval for such action in what they deem to be exceptional cases by Israel's attorney-general, Yehuda Weinstein, despite a petition to overrule the measure by a leading civil rights group.

"The threat of using foreign citizens for terrorist purposes is a growing trend," said Nadim Avod, a lawyer in the attorney-general's office. "Searching an email account is to be carried out in exceptional cases only after suspicious or pertinent information has been identified."

However, the examination of email accounts must be carried out in the presence of the individual.

The authorisation stopped short of permitting security officers to demand passwords or other information that would allow email accounts to be accessed by Shin Bet officers.

Emails may be examined for incriminating information, which may be relevant to public or national security, wrote Avod. Foreign travellers can refuse to co-operate, but may be denied entry as a result.

The attorney-general's approval of the measure follows a petition lodged by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), based on media reports of individuals being requested to disclose email correspondence during interrogation at Ben Gurion airport.

One case reported by Associated Press concerned Sandra Tamari, a 42-year-old American citizen of Palestinian descent, who was suspected of being a pro-Palestinian activist. Tamari declined to give Shin Bet officials access to her email account and was refused entry to Israel.

Lila Margalit, a lawyer for ACRI, said: "'Consent', given under threat of deportation, cannot serve as a basis for such a drastic invasion ofprivacy. In today's world, access to a person's email account is akin to access to their innermost thoughts and personal lives. Allowing security agents to take such invasive measures at their own discretion and on the basis of such flimsy consent is not befitting of a democracy."

Security at Ben Gurion airport is notoriously rigorous. Passengers are routinely questioned on the purpose of their visit, luggage is frequently searched by hand and some travellers are forced to undergo strip-searches.

www.en.shafaqna.com

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) – The Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi said that bullying is behind the world’s problems and humans cannot solve the problems of security and justice without the divine power. According to Shafaqna’s reporter in Qom, the Grand Ayatollah pointed to the world wars and said the world we live in has no rules, for instance Israel allows itself to make threats to attack and the USA supports it. He criticised the roles played by the international institutions and questioned their purposes. The Grand Ayatollah Makarem said it is really shameful that such threats are made and then the American congress discusses ways of supporting these threats.

He said we should ask on what basis and which rules these threats are made. This shows that there is no difference between today’s word and the times of world wars and the bullies attack without any authorisation. He questioned whether security can be established in the world in this type of environment. In his final remarks, the Grand Ayatollah Makarem Shirazi stressed that humans cannot solve the problems of security and justice without divine help and must pray for such times. He expressed the hope that with Allah’s (SWT) permission the appearance of Imam Mahdi (AS) will occur and by the reliance on the divine power, this will lead to clearing the world of bullies, oppressors and illogical people.

www.shafaqna.com/english

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov says Baku and the Tel Aviv regime have a ‘huge opportunity’ to expand bilateral ties.

Mammadyarov made the remarks in a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres on Monday, during a visit to Israel.

This is the first time an Azeri foreign minister has visited Israel in 21 years.

The Israeli president said Mammadyarov’s visit was “historic” and promoted the ‘good relations’ between Azerbaijan and the Israeli regime.

Referring to Azerbaijan’s “unique geographic location,” Peres said Tel Aviv considered Azerbaijan an important ally.

The Israeli president visited Azerbaijan in 2009, despite strong objections by Azeri scholars and clerics, and held talks with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and other senior officials.

During the visit, several memoranda of understanding were signed between the two presidents and it was decided that the Israeli company Aeronautics Defense Systems Ltd. build a factory in Baku.

In 2009, reports released by certain media regarding an agreement between Peres and Aliyev on the deployment of electronic stations confirmed that Azerbaijan and the Tel Aviv regime were cooperating on satellite systems.

The Israeli regime also sold 10 Hermes-450 drones to Azerbaijan between 2009 and 2012.

Israel and Azerbaijan also signed a $1.6-billion deal in 2012, according to which Tel Aviv would sell Heron and Searcher offensive drones to Baku. -www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:Islamic invitation turkey

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Israeli Minister of Military Affairs Moshe Yaalon have finalized a new arms deal worth USD 10 billion.

"Minister Yaalon and I agreed that the United States will make available to Israel a set of advanced new military capabilities ... including anti-radiation missiles and advanced radars for fighter jets, KC135 refueling aircraft, and most significantly the V-22 Osprey…," Hagel said in a joint press conference in Tel Aviv on Monday.

Hagel arrived in Israel on Sunday at the start of a six-day regional tour, his first since taking over as the Pentagon chief two months ago.

Meanwhile, Israel admitted to attacking a scientific research facility in Syria back in January, claiming the airstrike destroyed a convoy of advanced weapons that was bound for Lebanon's Hezbollah movement.

Hagel is set to visit Cairo, then Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to finalize details of a USD 10 billion arms deal that will also provide sophisticated missiles to Saudi Arabia and US F-16 fighter jets to the UAE.

The Pentagon chief’s trip comes a month after US President Barack Obama visited Israel and reaffirmed Washington’s backing of Tel Aviv while promoting fresh attempts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.-www.shafaqna.com/English

Source: Press TV

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association) –Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel met his Israeli counterpart Moshe Yaalon on Monday to put the finishing touches on a multi-billion dollars arms deal between the two allies, which will see Israel receiving an impressive package of advanced US missiles and aircraft.

"Today we took another significant step in the US-Israel defense relationship," Hagel said at a joint news conference in Tel Aviv, reiterating Washington's "ironclad pledge" to ensure Israel's qualitative military edge in the region.

"Minister Yaalon and I agreed that the United States will make available to Israel a set of advanced new military capabilities ... including anti-radiation missiles and advanced radars for fighter jets, KC135 refueling aircraft, and most significantly the V-22 Osprey, which the United States has not released to any other nation," Hagel confirmed.

Hagel arrived in Israel on Sunday at the start of a six-day regional tour, his first since taking over as Pentagon chief two months ago, which was likely to be dominated by concerns over Iran's nuclear program and the Syrian conflict.

Syria was a central part of their talks, with Yaalon admitting that Israel had already "acted" to stop advanced Syrian weapons from falling into militant hands, in what was seen as implicit confirmation of Israeli involvement in a strike on an arms convoy inside Syria in January.

"When they crossed this red line, we acted," he said, in what was widely understood to be the January 30 strike which hit what a US official said were surface-to-air missiles near Damascus that Israel suspected were en route to Hezbollah.

The second red line was maintaining the calm along the Israeli-Syrian ceasefire line on the occupied Golan Heights, and the third was the transfer of chemical weapons into the hands of militants, which "has not been tested yet," Yaalon said.

Later on Monday, Hagel will meet Israeli President Shimon Peres and then hold talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday morning before leaving for Jordan.

He will also visit Cairo on his tour, then Riyadh and Abu Dhabi to finalise details of the elaborate $10 billion arms deal that will also provide sophisticated missiles to Saudi and US F-16 fighter jets to the UAE.

Earlier last month, Hagel had reassured Ehud Barak in a two-hour meeting that he would work to prevent disruption to Washington's funding for military equipment to Israel despite massive recent US budget cuts.

The meeting came less than a week after President Barack Obama reluctantly ordered $85 billion in budget cuts, and amid speculation that the move would shave off funds to Israel. In 2007, the US and Israel signed a deal to send $30 billion in military aid to Israel for a decade.

-www.shafaqna.com/English

Source:al-akhbar